BPEL Models

The following text is derived from the BPEL entry in the online Wikipedia:

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), short for Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL), is an executable language for specifying interactions with Web Services. Processes in Business Process Execution Language export and import information by usingWeb Service interfaces exclusively.

Web service interactions can be described in two ways :

1.

Executable business processes, which model the actual behavior of a participant in a business interaction.

2.

Abstract business processes, which are partially specified processes that are not intended to be executed. An Abstract Process may hide some of the required concrete operational details.

BPEL is an Orchestration language, serialized in XML, which specifies an executable process that involves message exchanges with other systems. This messaging facility depends on the use of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1 to describe outgoing and incoming messages.

BPEL in Enterprise Architect:

Enterprise Architect supports generating BPEL from executable processes in the Business and Software Engineering and the Ultimate editions. Although there is no standard graphical notation for WS-BPEL, Enterprise Architect uses BPMN profile as a graphical front-end to capture BPELProcess descriptions. With the help of the BPMN Profile, Enterprise Architect enables you to develop BPEL diagrams quickly and simply. While BPMN provides a graphical notation for visualizing business process, BPEL provides a way for visualizing this graphical business process in XML.